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Research Methods in Computing: Plagiarism

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Khurshid AhmadProfessor of Computer Science

Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Presentation for Trinity CS post-grads,

April 2011, Dublin

Plagiarism: THE SCHÖN SAGA

October 2001: Hendrik Schon and Zhenan Bao: A single molecule transistor made out of organic material;

The end of silicon-based, highly toxic process of making transistor involving rare metals;

The new world of freely available organic molecules to build transistor.

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Plagiarism: THE SCHÖN SAGA

The Saga Continues with another name

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The Saga Continues with another name

To peer or not to peer : The Einstein Saga

Kennefick, Daniel. (2005). ‘Einstein Versus the Physical Review’. Physics Today, Vol. 58 (September

2005). pp 43-48.http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-9/pdf/vol58no9p43_48.pdf

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Scientific misconduct

Scientific misconduct consists of fabrication:

making up of datamanipulation of research data and processes

plagiarismself-plagiarismviolation of ethical standardsghost-writing

Plagiarism: [The word plagiarism derives from Latin roots: plagiarius, an abductor, and plagiare, to steal. ]

The expropriation of another author's text, and the presentation of it as one's own, constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of the ethics of scholarship. It undermines the credibility of historical inquiry.

DEFINITIONSThe American Historical Association

http://www.public.asu.edu/%7Eicprv/courses/hst498/plagiarism_def.html

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Plagiarism: The MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as the use of another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without giving proper credit to the source. The word comes from the Latin word plagiarius ("kidnapper"), and Alexander Lindey defines it as "the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind, and presenting it as one's own" (Plagiarism and Originality [New York: Harper, 1952] 2).

DEFINITIONSModern Language Association (MLA)

Plagiarism: The key element of this principle is that an author does not present the work of another as if it were his or her own work. This can extend to ideas as well as written words.

If an author models a study after one done by someone else, the originating author should be given credit. If the rationale for a study was suggested in the Discussion section of someone else's article, that person should be given credit. Given the free exchange of ideas, which is very important to the health of psychology, an author may not know where an idea for a study originated. If the author does know, however, the author should acknowledge the source; this includes personal communications (Publication Manual.... 292-95).

DEFINITIONSAmerican Psychological Association

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Plagiarism:

'Plagiarism' refers to the use of another's implementation of ideas, information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. Essential to an act of plagiarism is an element of dishonesty in attempting to pass off the plagiarised work as original. Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law. Like most terms from the area of intellectual property, plagiarism is a concept of the modern age and not really applicable to medieval or ancient works.

DEFINITIONSWikipedia

Self plagiarism: ‘Self-plagiarism occurs when authors reuse portions of their previous writings in subsequent research papers. Occasionally, the derived paper is simply a retitled and reformatted version of the original one, but more frequently it is assembled from bits and pieces of previous work.’ (Collberg and Kobourov 2005:88).

DEFINITIONS

Christian Collerg & Stephen Kobourov (2005). ‘Self plagiarism in Computer Science’,

Communications of the American Computer Machinery (ACM Society). Vol 48 (No.4), pp 88-

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DEFINITIONS: Types of Self Plagiarism

Christian Collerg & Stephen Kobourov (2005). ‘Self plagiarism in Computer Science’, Communications of the American

Computer Machinery (ACM Society). Vol 48 (No.4), pp 88-9

Carroll, R.T. Cryptomnesia. The Skeptics Dictionary. 1998. March 20, 2000.

http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~btcarrol/skeptic/cryptomn.html

Reuse type Involves incorporating

Selective bits and pieces from previously published work.

Incidental texts or ideas not directly related to the new ideas presented in the paper

Cryptomensic texts or ideas from previously published work while unaware of the existence of that work.

Opaque texts or ideas from previously published work without acknowledging the existence of that work.

Advocacy texts or ideas from previously published work when writing to a community different from that in which the original work was published.

Anecdote #1: Plagiarism is instutionalised

‘Plagiarism is conventionally seen as a serious

breach of scholarly ethics, being a theft of credit for

ideas in a competitive intellectual marketplace. This

emphasis overlooks the vast amount of

institutionalized plagiarism, including ghostwriting

and attribution of authorship to bureaucratic elites.

There is a case for reducing the stigma for

competitive plagiarism while exposing and

challenging the institutionalized varieties.’

Martin, Brian. (1994) Plagiarism: a misplaced emphasis. Journal of Information Ethics, Vol.

3, No. 2, Fall 1994, pp. 36-47. (From his web site)

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Anecdote #2: Towards a free market in

learning and research?

http://www.guilford.edu/services/index.cfm?ID=700004020

Anecdote#2: Towards a free market in learning and research?

http://search.essaysite.com/cgi-bin/query?mss=essaysite&q=plagiarism&submit=Search

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Anecdote#3: The Poehlman Saga

SOUND FROM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC RADIO

Faking menopause and aging data:

Obesity research Eric Poehlmanfabricated 17 applications for federal grants and in March of 2005 was barred for life from seeking federal funds and his name was added to the Public Health Service Office of Research Integrity List of Misconduct.

Anecdote#4: The Ninov SagaA research scientist in the USA claimed to have found the heaviest element in

the prestigious Lawrence Berkley Laboratory. But then had to withdraw the

element!!

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Scientific misconduct: One in Three Scientists Confesses to Having Sinned

Action %age

plagiarism or falsification (<)1.5%

"changed the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source; 15.5%

admitted overlooking others’ use of flawed data; 12.5%

had circumvented minor aspects of requirements regarding the use of human subjects."

7.6%

Meredith Wadman, One in Three Scientists Confesses to Having Sinned, 435 Nature 718 (2005);

Scientific misconduct

Reasons for scientific misconduct include:1. career pressure

2. believing that one knows the right answer3. ability to get away with it

Reasons for retraction of papers mainly consist of:

a. errors (i.e. irreproducible results)b. fraud or misconduct (e.g. in Schön’s case)c. political reasons (e.g. in Galileo’s case)

(Goodstein 2002)

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Plagiarism: THE SCHÖN SAGA

Hendrick J. Schön obtained his PhD from the University of Konstanz (Germany) in 1997 and worked at the Bell Labs (USA) until 2002.

During 2001 and 2002, his works were hailed as remarkable breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, and solid state devices particularly for his work on single molecule transistors and on high temperature superconductors:

organic single molecule transistors – that would have taken us beyond the Moore’s law and increased the number of transistors on a chip way beyond today’s technology- and

controllable high-temperature superconductors (superconductors work well at –270o C and high temperature here means –170oC) will increase memory speeds and processor power by orders of magnitude.

Schön was being nominated for the Nobel Prize

Plagiarism: THE SCHÖN SAGAHendrick J. Schön has reported to have published over 80 research papers all in leading journals of science and of physics including Nature, Science, and the American Physical

Society’s Physical Review amongst others. All these journals have a ‘high impact factor’. Here is a sample of 15 papers out of 45 examined in detail after its publication. He took a

break for X-mas.

Month 2000 2001

January

February Science

March Nature

April Science Science

May

June Science

July Science

August

September Science

October Nature &Appl Phys Letters

November Science & Nature Nature

December Appl. Phys. Letters Appl. Phys. Lett & Science

All these papers have now been retracted publicly – 45 of all his 80 or so publications.

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CASE STUDY: THE SCHÖN SAGA:Not all misconduct is linguistic!

Two experiments carried out, by Schon and colleagues, very different temperatures were reported to have identical noise � Schon suggested that he had submitted the same graph twice by accident;

But then another reader found the same noise in a paper describing a third experiment.

More instances of duplicate data were found in Schön's work.

CASE STUDY: THE SCHÖN SAGA:Not all misconduct is linguistic!

http://publish.aps.org/reports/lucentrep.pdf

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CASE STUDY: THE SCHÖN SAGA� Prof. Leonardo Cassuto, described perhaps the greatest fraud in scientific

publishing in recent times. It described work that was supposed to have

taken place in Lucent Laboratories (formerly Bell Labs). Dr. Hendrick

Schon published about 90 papers in 3 or 4 years, an almost unheard of

rate of production. All papers had been submitted to reputable journals,

including the prestigious "Nature" and "Science" and had been peer

reviewed and published.

� They described experiments which claimed to show organic crystals

which had been made to behave as semiconductors, including pentacene

as photovoltaic, and C60 (buckyballs) superconducting at low

temperatures. Dr. Schon seemed to be heading for a Nobel Prize. After

publication, other scientists attempted to repeat the results without

success: this was the first warning of something amiss. Someone pointed

out that the same graph appeared in two separate papers, with different

axes, purporting to be the result of separate experiments: this was the

second warning.

CASE STUDY: THE SCHÖN SAGA

•The Committee looked at 24 allegations from 20 different

sources with over 100 different complaints; 16 cases of

scientific misconduct were proven, 2 had no direct link to

his work, and 6 were not used in publication. He was aksed

to, and did, retract 25 of his largely co-authored

publications in the high impact journals.

• Only Hendrick Schon was reprimanded, he was

dismissed by Bell Labs in September 2002 and in June

2004 the University of Konstanz withdrew his PhD because

he brought the discipline in disrepute. His thesis has not

been criticised for plagiarism and it is understood that his

lawyers are in touch with the University authorities.

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Beasley Report

The allegations investigated in the Beasley Report were:

1. data substitution

2. unrealistic precision (of data = precisions beyond that expected in real experiment)

3. contradictory physics (= results that were inconsistent with stated device parameters and prevailing physical understanding)

Conclusions of the Beasley Report

� The Committee found falsification or fabrication of data in 16 out of the 24 cases they examined.

� Substitution of curves or parts of them to represent materials or devices in order to produce a more convincing representation of behaviour observed was found to be scientific misconduct.

� Schön did not follow generally accepted practice concerning the maintenance of traceable records nor did he retain original data in a form with which critical physical claims could be verified or examined.

� The Committee found all coauthors of Hendrik Schön in the work in question completely cleared of any scientific misconduct

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Report of the Committee “Liability in Science” at the University of Konstanz� It was limited to the papers that originated in Konstanz (papers on photovoltaics)

� The main results are not questionable

� Inconsistencies in the publications were found but the documentation provided was not enough to prove fabrication of data

� Inconsistencies did not affect conclusions

� The committee concluded that on this basis no deliberate manipulation could be inferred

Report of the Committee “Liability in Science” at the University of Konstanz� The remark in the Beasley Report that most papers had originated in Konstanz only explains the circumstances.

� The committee also found that there are no grounds to accuse Schön of gross negligence.

� Schön’s behaviour lies in a ‘grey area’ hence his scientific misconduct cannot be proved.

� The final conclusion of the Committee is that Schön’s mistakes can be corrected by Errata in the journals concerned.

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University of Konstanz ‘rejects’ Schon’sthesis� Schon’s thesis was rejected by the University of Konstanz in 2004 on grounds of unbecoming scientific conduct.

� Schon appealed against the decision and the University took 5 more years to decide!

Report of the Doctoral Committee, University of Konstanz